Thou shalt shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Follow the constitution, except for the parts we disagree with./asshats

Great Porn Dragon:simplicimus: AdolfOliverPanties: Isn't there something in the Ten Commandments about graven images?

I think that refers only to the competition, Baal and whoever else was being worshiped.

More properly, refering to graven images of all the ba'alim and ashtarot, aka the old gods and goddesses of Sumer (which were later adopted by the Babylonians).

(To make a long story short, it's now thought by actual archaeologists that Judaism started out as a monotheistic fork of Mesopotamian polytheistic faiths (being probably the first monotheistic faith to actually catch on, versus Akhenaten's failed attempt). There are still some traces of the old polytheism (particularly in Genesis and the creation myths), and at the time that the Ten Commandments were encoded as the basis of halachic law, there were still a lot of issues with folks reverting to the polytheistic worship of the old gods.

Hell, even the Bible itself mentions this in relation to Moses and Aaron--with Aaron having set up a golden calf, a ritual item of Ba'al Hadad (the old Sumerian god of storms) which was specifically designed as an idol to the (monotheistic) god of Israel. There are at least two instances recorded after this when royalty or the people in general went back into frank polytheistic worship (with the God of Israel equated to either Ba'al Hadad or El) and a number of other instances where the early Israeli people had gone into partial polytheism reversion (with the God of Israel being paired with Ishtar or Astara, and the female companions of God/the gods being referred to as the ashtarot--"Astara" may well have been a functional title of "Lady" in this case, much as "ba'al" is actually a title of "Lord").

Yes, this is where knowing a bit about the predecessors of Judaism gets very interesting :D

I sometimes wonder how much of the monotheism that the Hebrews picked up was related to the dualistic ideas of Zoroastrianism coming out of Central Asia. Judaism has a weird mix of Indo-European ideas of an overall father-god figure grafted onto a local Semitic storm-god chassis. I get the feeling that the Hebrews as a nomadic tribe of herdsmen blundered into the relatively advanced and polytheistic culture of Mesopotamia and tried to mesh up their simple set of gods with a complicated one.

Look at the story of Cain and Abel, and all the stuff in Genesis--it's really clear that it was a herding culture that distrusted the agricultural folk of the cities.

I think that refers only to the competition, Baal and whoever else was being worshiped.

More properly, refering to graven images of all the ba'alim and ashtarot, aka the old gods and goddesses of Sumer (which were later adopted by the Babylonians).

(To make a long story short, it's now thought by actual archaeologists that Judaism started out as a monotheistic fork of Mesopotamian polytheistic faiths (being probably the first monotheistic faith to actually catch on, versus Akhenaten's failed attempt). There are still some traces of the old polytheism (particularly in Genesis and the creation myths), and at the time that the Ten Commandments were encoded as the basis of halachic law, there were still a lot of issues with folks reverting to the polytheistic worship of the old gods.

Hell, even the Bible itself mentions this in relation to Moses and Aaron--with Aaron having set up a golden calf, a ritual item of Ba'al Hadad (the old Sumerian god of storms) which was specifically designed as an idol to the (monotheistic) god of Israel. There are at least two instances recorded after this when royalty or the people in general went back into frank polytheistic worship (with the God of Israel equated to either Ba'al Hadad or El) and a number of other instances where the early Israeli people had gone into partial polytheism reversion (with the God of Israel being paired with Ishtar or Astara, and the female companions of God/the gods being referred to as the ashtarot--"Astara" may well have been a functional title of "Lady" in this case, much as "ba'al" is actually a title of "Lord").

Yes, this is where knowing a bit about the predecessors of Judaism gets very interesting :D

In my experience, the more religious a person is, the less likely they want to hear about the ACTUAL origin of their religious customs. Christians, in particular, (likely due to my increased exposure to this group) seem especially offended when confronted with the Pagan origins of many of their most treasured traditions.

Try seeking out educated Christians. The college where I teach has a seminary attached to it. In addition to my wife being a theology grad student, I am friends with a good number of the other faculty members. Ever gotten together to watch MST3k with an Old Testament prof, two theologians, a historian, and a philosopher? It's an experience. I have found that the PhD-holding types (including the conservative ones) love learning about the cultural context in which their religious traditions developed. I find that it is those who never dig any deeper than their childhood Sunday School lessons (or maybe get a 2-year diploma from a local Bible College) that are the ones who see scholarly inquiry as a threat.

On the other hand, it also might have something to do with your approach. If you launch discussions of these topics with the attitude that you are "explaining away" their religion as "nothing but" carry-overs from earlier phenomena, then I can understand them getting annoyed at you.

SquiggsIN:AssAsInAssassin: SquiggsIN: AssAsInAssassin: unlikely: You know the people who wanted that thing there in the first place are the same ones who keep talking about how the want their state to succeed from the US and carry signs that say descent is the highest form of patriotic, right?

So I don't actually see this as a problem.

Normally I'd let this go, but you look like you could use some help.

It's "secede," not "succeed." "Succeed" means "do something correctly". "Secede" means to split away from one's country and form a new country."It's "dissent," not "descent." "Descent" is a noun that means "the act of going down from a higher place." "Dissent" is a verb that means "disagree."

My alma mater had a very difficult time spell-checking a bronze plaque that was placed over a buried "time capsule" in front of the big iconic building in the middle of campus. It was placed a few years before I arrived, and took nearly 4 years before anybody noticed that the word SYMBOLIC was spelled as SYMBLIC. It was quietly replaced my freshman year with an identical plaque that spelled the word SYMOBLIC. After a bit of a hubbub about the misspelling, with the school newspaper running an embarrassing story, the school finally corrected the error on its third try. Coincidently, the plaque was sponsored and placed by the English department.

Sidenote: When they first replaced the original plaque, I had the fortunate timing of being there as it was removed, and bought it off of the man replacing it for ~60 bucks (about what he was going to get for melting it down, it's about 40 lbs. of bronze). When the school paper ran the story about the misspelling, they only knew of the second misspelling, so only a few friends and I know that the original plaque exists. I still haven't decided what to do with it, since it's been nearly 6 years since I graduated. It served as a coffee table (sitting atop a keg shell) for a few years.

simplicimus:The Larch: simplicimus: jshine: simplicimus: The design is wrong. It's two tablets, 5 on each. Did this guy even read the Old Testament?

I certainly haven't. Where does it say how many commandment were on each tablet?

Well, it's implied from the Talmud. 5 and 5 on two tablets. Might be in the OT,

Where does it say in the OT that there were 10 commandments? I can't find the number of commandments anywhere in the Bible. It looks like someone just took the words that God said and sort and said "meh... that's somewhere between 9 and 13, depending on how you divide 'em up. Let's say there's about 10. And different religions can argue about how to number them for the next few thousand years."

How do I know? I don't read Hebrew. The 10 commandments are a translation of Exodus 20:1-17. But the Talmud is pretty clear on their being 10.

Some of the more interesting gnostic documents mention more than 10 commandments. Talking with a jewish scholar, I got the inpression there were another set of commandments which came before the ones we know today. Basically, moses got to the bottom of the mountain and looked around. He saw what was happening and dashed the tablets he'd written the 10 commandments on to the ground, turned around and walked back up the mountain, and in no uncertain terms, noted thet he and God needed to get to brass tacks with his flock, as they were not the most eloquent of peoples. The long and the short of it is that our current understanding of the 10 commandments is the dumbed-down version, because the jews at the time were the equivalent of the population of the short bus, having lived in a pan-helenic society(egypt) for so long, they had started to move into polytheistic worship, much like the phrase, "When in rome" but they were in Egypt.

/that guy was fun to talk to//just don't get him started on the oiginal polytheistic religion which evolved, slowly, into the current version judaism(sp?)

Bonzo_1116:I sometimes wonder how much of the monotheism that the Hebrews picked up was related to the dualistic ideas of Zoroastrianism coming out of Central Asia. Judaism has a weird mix of Indo-European ideas of an overall father-god figure grafted onto a local Semitic storm-god chassis.

Yep. "Jupiter" comes from the Indo-European "dyeu-peter", or "god-father." Another name for Jupiter was "Jove." Except it was "Iove" (That's a capital "eye," not a lower-case "el.") which means it was pronounced "YO-WEH." "Zeus" comes from the same source.

Yep. "Jupiter" comes from the Indo-European "dyeu-peter", or "god-father." Another name for Jupiter was "Jove." Except it was "Iove" (That's a capital "eye," not a lower-case "el.") which means it was pronounced "YO-WEH." "Zeus" comes from the same source.

felching pen:/As a Christian, I wish we Christians would act more Christ-like.

Silly Christian, American Christianity is about making a big show that you believe. As long as you believe you are saved, so you can act like a giant douchebag and it's ok because you're forgiven. Doing good works? That's Papist talk, and Papism is practically devil worship.

MaudlinMutantMollusk:simplicimus: The design is wrong. It's two tablets, 5 on each. Did this guy even read the Old Testament?

Do you think any of 'em actually read any of the book?

I had to explain this to my friend. While Jesus did exhort making one's self better (and so on) he was the ultimate hippie. I mean hippie as in give everything you don't need to survive to help others. I reminded him, that as a prosperity gospel heretic who doesn't shun wealth, it is unlikely he will get into heaven. His "good works" ledger is woefully inadequate, his help of fellow man is low, and his material desires are too excessive.

Tldr version:

Lapsed Irish Catholic schooled a Lutheran because if there's one thing you get beaten into your skull by the Nuns it is the Bible. Well that, and a fear of women named Mary Francis.

---

Why, the poor guy thought that God was nice. No, God is not nice. God is vengeful and hot tempered. Jesus was nice, and he moderated dad a bit. Have no doubt that otherwise (if there really is a God) we'd see bears rending children guilty of petty transgressions an awful lot today.

I think that refers only to the competition, Baal and whoever else was being worshiped.

More properly, refering to graven images of all the ba'alim and ashtarot, aka the old gods and goddesses of Sumer (which were later adopted by the Babylonians).

(To make a long story short, it's now thought by actual archaeologists that Judaism started out as a monotheistic fork of Mesopotamian polytheistic faiths (being probably the first monotheistic faith to actually catch on, versus Akhenaten's failed attempt). There are still some traces of the old polytheism (particularly in Genesis and the creation myths), and at the time that the Ten Commandments were encoded as the basis of halachic law, there were still a lot of issues with folks reverting to the polytheistic worship of the old gods.

Hell, even the Bible itself mentions this in relation to Moses and Aaron--with Aaron having set up a golden calf, a ritual item of Ba'al Hadad (the old Sumerian god of storms) which was specifically designed as an idol to the (monotheistic) god of Israel. There are at least two instances recorded after this when royalty or the people in general went back into frank polytheistic worship (with the God of Israel equated to either Ba'al Hadad or El) and a number of other instances where the early Israeli people had gone into partial polytheism reversion (with the God of Israel being paired with Ishtar or Astara, and the female companions of God/the gods being referred to as the ashtarot--"Astara" may well have been a functional title of "Lady" in this case, much as "ba'al" is actually a title of "Lord").

Yes, this is where knowing a bit about the predecessors of Judaism gets very interesting :D

I sometimes wonder how much of the monotheism that the Hebrews picked up was related to the dualistic ideas of Zoroastrianism coming out of Central Asia. Judaism has a weird mix ...

A little from column A, a little from column B, a little from column Z:

a) The original monotheistic concept...we're not 100% sure what the inspiration was, whether this was homegrown or whether there could have been some influence from Egypt's failed experiment in monotheism (Akhenaten's state cult of Aten the sun god, which was immediately reversed upon his death)--there's actually even been some speculation that the story of Moses could have been influenced by stories of Akhenaten's attempts to form a monotheistic faith.

b) The later substrate of monotheism (particularly the transformation of the role of ha-Satan from Prosecuting Attorney In the Divine Courtroom to overt anti-Deity as canonised in Christianity) seems to have had DEFINITE influence from Zoroastrianism (and it would appear Judaism may not have been the only religion "cross-pollinated" in such a way).

Son of Thunder:Yes, but that's because I make the effort to read up on what actual scholars say about religious texts, instead of just shooting my mouth off.

In my experience, theology scholars spend an awful lot or their time developing ways of explaining that "No, God didn't mean that" where that is something which is (a) clearly stated in the Bible and (b) inconvenient to the individual or their church. The Catholics are the masters at this, having managed to convert not killing into the inquisition, not coveting into the fabulous wealth of the church and love thy neighbour into two thousand years or religious war.

But you know, I rather like them for it. They are such openly and unashamedly devious bastards that they merit some respect. It's the thick as pigshiat evangelicals who start off with biblical literalism, realise that it's full of contradictions and impossible to implement and then stick doggedly to a few bits which suit their own tastes who annoy me.

TL;DR. Papists explain away the bits of the Bible they don't like while evos ignore them.

Son of Thunder:Yes, but that's because I make the effort to read up on what actual scholars say about religious texts, instead of just shooting my mouth off.

OK, smart guy. You are undoubtedly aware that the meaning of this text has been interpreted in many different ways by many different groups and many different times. Why don't you tell us why everyone else in the whole history has been doing it wrong, and how you're doing it right.

Somacandra:AdolfOliverPanties: Isn't there something in the Ten Commandments about graven images?\[i.imgur.com image 537x699]

Yup, that's the monument--with misspellings and all.

1) fark them for attaching the American flag to this religious item, in respect to both the religious and the patriotic, this is farking stupid.2) WHY THE fark IS THE FIELD ON THE GODDAMNED RIGHT!? THESE ASSHATS CAN'T EVEN FLAG CORRECTLY

UNITED STATES FLAG CODE SECTION [ 7i ] : When displayed either horizontally or vertically against a wall, the union should be uppermost and to the flag's own right, that is, to the observer's left. When displayed in a window, the flag should be displayed in the same way, with the union or blue field to the left of the observer in the street.

NIXON YOU DOLT!!!!!:AdolfOliverPanties: Isn't there something in the Ten Commandments about graven images?

Not in the catholic version.

Michelangelo's agent knew what he was doing. "You want the painted ceiling, you lose the brimstone for ceiling painters or my boy's off to Constantinople and you can slap on a couple of coats of magnolia yourself. Capiche?"

1. Thall shalt not worship anyone other than Ralph Dale Earnhardt, Sr.2. Take off your hat at the table.3. Remember to watch the OSU game4. Do what your Pappy says, and don't sass your Mama.5. You shall not kill without a permit or outside hunting season6. If I catch you and your teenage cousin alone in the barn again....7. Don't take nuthin that ain't yours.8. Lies make baby Jesus cry9. Jealousy will get you nowhere.10. Rubbin' is racin'

SquiggsIN:And because they had a well-trained / lucky army their views have managed to propagate/evolve and dominate two-thirds of the planet.

I'd really argue that the spread of Christianity(and Abrahamic faiths in general) as something other than a subsect of Judaism (akin to the Essenes or Chabad Lubavich) is due to two fairly lucky accidents:

a) The conversion of a Romanised Jewish person (Saul of Tarsus, who later renamed himself to Paul in a fairly long tradition of "renaming upon conversion" that seems to have been a trope in pre-Diaspora Jewish communities) who introduced a "goyim-friendly" version of the then-nascent Christian faith and no longer restricted the faith to observant (if dissident) Jewish people.

b) The conversion of Constantine I in 313 AD (which effectively ended official persecutions and blood libels against Christianity by the Roman Empire, and led for the establishment of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire (and later, the Western Empire and its descendants and the Eastern Empire in Constantinople until well into the Middle Ages).

As for Islam, it's a little more difficult to trace back to the Abrahamic faiths but Muhammad was almost certainly exposed to both Christianity and Judaism (even explicitly acknowledging the groups as People Of The Book who had received revelations from the Most High)--it can be best seen as an Arabicised continuation of the tradition of "new revelations" that Christianity set a basis for. (Of particular note is the fact that the Arab peninsula was one of the few areas left in the Middle East at that point that still followed some sort of pre-Abrahamic faith, which again provides "colour text" for some of the commandments in the Quran to go after idolators and wipe them out--you can see the direct predecessors in the struggles of the Old Testament prophets against the return of the "Old Religion". Honestly, had the Christian canon not been "frozen" in the Council of Nicaea, we'd probably have had stuff just as bloody from Scandinavia or other areas where the "old faiths" still reared their head now and again in the Christian holy books.)

simplicimus:The design is wrong. It's two tablets, 5 on each. Did this guy even read the Old Testament?

Does anybody know the cretin who paid $10,000 for this monument? If so, hook him up with me in this thread. I'll give $100 to any charity of his choice if he can recite the Ten Commandments from memory without either cheating or cramming.

The Larch:Son of Thunder: Yes, but that's because I make the effort to read up on what actual scholars say about religious texts, instead of just shooting my mouth off.

OK, smart guy. You are undoubtedly aware that the meaning of this text has been interpreted in many different ways by many different groups and many different times. Why don't you tell us why everyone else in the whole history has been doing it wrong, and how you're doing it right.

Really? Everyone else in all of history has interpreted that commandment as an absolute prohibition of all visual art? Citation needed.

Yep. "Jupiter" comes from the Indo-European "dyeu-peter", or "god-father." Another name for Jupiter was "Jove." Except it was "Iove" (That's a capital "eye," not a lower-case "el.") which means it was pronounced "YO-WEH." "Zeus" comes from the same source.

Which is actually fairly impressive, considering that the Indo-European language family has no known relation to the Afro-Asiatic languages (of which the Semitic languages are a broad language family, much as the Romance or Germanic languages are part of sub-families of Indo-European)...save for some as-yet-unproven theories of relating some of the larger primary language families that still tend to be considered a little fringey.

Great Porn Dragon:simplicimus: AdolfOliverPanties: Isn't there something in the Ten Commandments about graven images?

I think that refers only to the competition, Baal and whoever else was being worshiped.

More properly, refering to graven images of all the ba'alim and ashtarot, aka the old gods and goddesses of Sumer (which were later adopted by the Babylonians).

(To make a long story short, it's now thought by actual archaeologists that Judaism started out as a monotheistic fork of Mesopotamian polytheistic faiths (being probably the first monotheistic faith to actually catch on, versus Akhenaten's failed attempt). There are still some traces of the old polytheism (particularly in Genesis and the creation myths), and at the time that the Ten Commandments were encoded as the basis of halachic law, there were still a lot of issues with folks reverting to the polytheistic worship of the old gods.

Hell, even the Bible itself mentions this in relation to Moses and Aaron--with Aaron having set up a golden calf, a ritual item of Ba'al Hadad (the old Sumerian god of storms) which was specifically designed as an idol to the (monotheistic) god of Israel. There are at least two instances recorded after this when royalty or the people in general went back into frank polytheistic worship (with the God of Israel equated to either Ba'al Hadad or El) and a number of other instances where the early Israeli people had gone into partial polytheism reversion (with the God of Israel being paired with Ishtar or Astara, and the female companions of God/the gods being referred to as the ashtarot--"Astara" may well have been a functional title of "Lady" in this case, much as "ba'al" is actually a title of "Lord").

Yes, this is where knowing a bit about the predecessors of Judaism gets very interesting :D

I STILL can't quite accept that it's a total coincidence that Ahnknaten got his monotheism on, led everyone out into the desert and right around the same time the Hebrews appear on the historical scene as monotheists and have a story about their leader, a prince of Egypt leading them out of Egypt. After all "Moses" is the Egyptian word for "son of. It makes me wonder if the original Hebrew weren't some sort of loyalist remnant of Ahnknaten followers (maybe mixed with "Habiru" mercenaries from a sort of praetorian guard) who left Egypt after the priests of the traditional cults re-asserted dominance

When these politicians allow and endorse these 10 commandments, and in this case one of them helped pay for it, they should personally have to foot the bill for the legal defense that they know is coming. Put your money where your mouth is, not the taxpayers money.

I think that refers only to the competition, Baal and whoever else was being worshiped.

More properly, refering to graven images of all the ba'alim and ashtarot, aka the old gods and goddesses of Sumer (which were later adopted by the Babylonians).

(To make a long story short, it's now thought by actual archaeologists that Judaism started out as a monotheistic fork of Mesopotamian polytheistic faiths (being probably the first monotheistic faith to actually catch on, versus Akhenaten's failed attempt). There are still some traces of the old polytheism (particularly in Genesis and the creation myths), and at the time that the Ten Commandments were encoded as the basis of halachic law, there were still a lot of issues with folks reverting to the polytheistic worship of the old gods.

Hell, even the Bible itself mentions this in relation to Moses and Aaron--with Aaron having set up a golden calf, a ritual item of Ba'al Hadad (the old Sumerian god of storms) which was specifically designed as an idol to the (monotheistic) god of Israel. There are at least two instances recorded after this when royalty or the people in general went back into frank polytheistic worship (with the God of Israel equated to either Ba'al Hadad or El) and a number of other instances where the early Israeli people had gone into partial polytheism reversion (with the God of Israel being paired with Ishtar or Astara, and the female companions of God/the gods being referred to as the ashtarot--"Astara" may well have been a functional title of "Lady" in this case, much as "ba'al" is actually a title of "Lord").

Yes, this is where knowing a bit about the predecessors of Judaism gets very interesting :D

In my experience, the more religious a person is, the less likely they want to hear about the ACTUAL origin of their religious customs. Christians, in particular, (likely due t ...

You hang out with the wrong Christians. This Roman Catholic gets a huge chuckle when he's at an Easter vigil mass and he watches the Priest re-create the Beltane rite of kindling the sacred fire, or sees a stained glass window dedicated to "St." Brigid. It shakes my faith not even the tiniest bit to know that our forms and rituals of worship often are somebody else's with the serial numbers filed off. Humans like rituals and pageantry, what the fark ya gonna do?

I'm less offended by the misspellings and the All-Seeing Eye as I am by the American Eagle carved there. Considering how the Jews reacted when the Romans tried to nail their Imperial Eagle over the doors of the Temple in Jerusalem, it's pretty ironic.

Actually, what would be ironic is if the monument got defaced not by some radical secularist but by a proper God-fearing Christian who objected to the worldly national symbols placed on top of God's Law.

AssAsInAssassin:Bonzo_1116: I sometimes wonder how much of the monotheism that the Hebrews picked up was related to the dualistic ideas of Zoroastrianism coming out of Central Asia. Judaism has a weird mix of Indo-European ideas of an overall father-god figure grafted onto a local Semitic storm-god chassis.

Yep. "Jupiter" comes from the Indo-European "dyeu-peter", or "god-father." Another name for Jupiter was "Jove." Except it was "Iove" (That's a capital "eye," not a lower-case "el.") which means it was pronounced "YO-WEH." "Zeus" comes from the same source.

http://www.fark.com/comments/7438098/80746572#c80746572

and allow for a few centuries of linguistic drift and regional accents and it's not hard to hear Yahweh (Yah-wheh not Ya'll-way) in Allah (Or El-Al, the root word of Yahweh). It wouldn't shock me if the origins of Islam didn't have its roots in the remnants of the Samaritan culture which seems to vanish just after biblical times

Hey, wait, you mean there's nothing in the ten commandments about no gay sex? Some of my fellow state residents want a word with this here god fellow. Don't you know that christians/republicans always look the the bible for guidance on this? I had shrimp today and wore my two diffrent types of colth to celibrate. Yes, I knant speel, i went to shcooll hear.